


Cast Some Light And You'll Be Alright

by Rrrowr



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-19
Updated: 2012-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-02 05:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rrrowr/pseuds/Rrrowr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam cleans Castiel's trench coat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cast Some Light And You'll Be Alright

**Author's Note:**

> written immediately after 7.02

Dean is mourning.

Sam doesn’t have to be hallucinating to see it. They hunt, and the coat stays folded tight between the wall of the Impala’s trunk and a bag of rock salt. Afterward, Dean drops his weapons and reaches for it like a touchstone. Nothing more than that. He still does his best to take care of Sam and Bobby and to play the game straight-faced, but he spends much of his time trying to appear as if he’s not clinging to Castiel’s coat like a lifeline. 

It’s Sam who finally brings it out, spreads its stained and stinking threads across the back of the Impala. The coat is all they have left of Castiel right now. Its interior is streaked with inky black and there is blood all over the outside. Sam picks gingerly at its loose buttons and thinks about how it’s so odd to see the coat in this condition. Castiel had always managed to keep it pristine, as if the clothes were as much a part of his vessel as the skin he wore; it would be a shame if Castiel came back to it in this condition, with every drop of black and red as an ugly reminder of his last moments.

Sam takes his time cleaning it. He treats it with stain remover — scrubs it in with a dish rag — and ends up washing it a few times before the blood’s been reduced to a tan and the leviathan ink to a dull grey. He finds tears in some of the edges and does his best to stitch them up. Between mending his own clothes and his own body, Sam figures he’s pretty good at it, getting the threads all tidy and the knots hidden.

It takes hours — a quarter of the way through one of Bobby’s books and half a sandwich later — before he’s done and it’s not perfect. The coat looks a bit worse for wear but better from what it had been, at least. Now, it bears only the memories of the Leviathan and the many deaths; the rest of the evidence has washed away. Sam supposes that it’s fitting that Castiel, whose Heavenly powers kept his body immaculate, should wear his scars on his clothing instead of his skin.

Sam hangs up the coat on the door for a moment, stepping back to see if he’s missed anything, and Dean walks in. Sam sees him stop, startled, in the middle of the room.

“What are you doing with that?” Dean asks.

Sam can hear the grief in his voice and how he aches at being reminded that the coat is a poor stand-in for the person who should be with them — as if he isn’t always thinking it, somewhere, underneath everything else. Dean doesn’t have to say anything. Never has to with Sam.

“Cleaning it up,” Sam tells him without looking. “Didn’t think Cas’d want it looking like crap when he gets back.”

“Sammy—”

Sam cuts him off at once. “Dean.” Thankfully, his brother shuts up, and in the brief moment of silence, Sam rubs his thumb over one of the mended cuffs. The threads are more obvious than he’d intended. “He’s gonna come back. There’s no way that he’s not out there, fighting. There’s just not.”

His voice cracks and he wipes at his face, sweeping away the feeling of vulnerability until he can look at the coat without it swimming away.

Dean claps a hand on his shoulder, squeezes him into a half-hug, and says, “Looks real good, Sammy. I’m sure he’ll love it.”

“Yeah, hope so.”

Sam is mourning too.


End file.
